Short-Term Factors and the 2019 General Election Case Study
Short-term factors are influences on voting behaviour that operate within a single election campaign rather than reflecting a voter's long-standing loyalty, such as party leadership, campaign competence and 'valence' issues like economic competence.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Learn the definition of a short-term factor and how it differs from a long-term factor: it operates within a single campaign rather than reflecting a lasting loyalty.
- Learn the three main types of short-term factor: leadership and image, the quality and content of the campaign, including manifestos and events, and valence issues, which party seems most competent on a widely shared priority.
- Learn the core facts of the 2019 general election as a case study: the Conservative Party's 'Get Brexit Done' campaign, the scale of its majority, and Labour's loss of a number of traditionally safe seats in the Midlands and North of England, the 'Red Wall'.
- Learn how Brexit operated as a valence-style issue in 2019: many voters prioritised which party seemed most likely to resolve the outstanding Brexit process, which cut across the traditional Labour/Conservative class divide in some seats.
- Learn how leadership was a short-term factor in 2019, with polling at the time showing weaker personal ratings for Jeremy Corbyn than for Boris Johnson among the wider electorate.
- Learn how to combine long-term and short-term explanations for a single election result, since a full explanation of 2019 needs both the long-term regional and class-dealignment context and the short-term Brexit and leadership factors.
- For 'assess'/'evaluate' questions comparing short-term and long-term explanations, weigh a short-term factor against a long-term factor within the same paragraph and reach a judgement, rather than treating the two categories separately without comparison.
Worked example
Explain how both a long-term factor, partisan/class dealignment, and a short-term factor, the Brexit issue, can be used together to explain why some traditionally safe Labour seats in the Midlands and North of England voted Conservative in the 2019 general election.
- State the long-term context: partisan and class dealignment meant that by 2019, many voters in these seats no longer felt the strong, automatic loyalty to Labour that earlier generations typically had.
- State the short-term trigger: the 2019 election was fought heavily around Brexit, and many of these seats had voted strongly to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.
- Connect the two: because underlying party loyalty was already weaker, the long-term factor, it took less to persuade some of these voters to switch parties over a single dominant issue, the short-term factor, than it would have in an era of stronger class alignment.
- Note the specific short-term mechanism: the Conservative campaign's clear, simple message of 'Get Brexit Done' offered these Leave-voting seats a direct route to resolving the issue, while Labour's more ambiguous Brexit position under Corbyn may have been less clear-cut to voters focused on that single issue.
- State the overall conclusion: the 2019 result in these seats is best explained by a short-term issue, Brexit, acting on an electorate whose long-term loyalty had already been weakened by dealignment, rather than by either factor alone.
Practice questions
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Q1Define a short-term factor in voting behaviour.Show answer
Answer: An influence on how someone votes that operates within a single election campaign, such as leadership, campaign events or a dominant issue, rather than a lasting party loyalty.
Q2What is a 'valence issue'?Show answer
Answer: An issue most voters broadly agree matters, e.g. the economy, or resolving Brexit in 2019, so the election turns on which party or leader seems most competent to handle it, rather than on ideological disagreement about the issue itself.
Q3Which party won the December 2019 UK general election, and under which leader?Show answer
Answer: The Conservative Party, led by Boris Johnson.
Q4What was the Conservative Party's central campaign slogan in the 2019 general election?Show answer
Answer: 'Get Brexit Done'.
Q5What is the 'Red Wall', and what happened to it in the 2019 general election?Show answer
Answer: A term for a set of traditionally safe, long-standing Labour-voting constituencies in the Midlands and North of England, many of which voted Conservative for the first time in decades in the 2019 general election.
Q6Name one short-term factor, other than the Brexit issue, that analysts point to in explaining the 2019 result.Show answer
Answer: Leadership, since polling at the time suggested weaker personal ratings for Jeremy Corbyn than for Boris Johnson among the wider electorate.
Q7Why is the 2019 general election commonly used as a case study of short-term factors?Show answer
Answer: Because a single dominant issue, resolving Brexit, and strong leadership contrasts appear to have shifted the result in a way long-term class and partisan loyalty alone would not predict.
Q8Give one reason a full explanation of the 2019 result needs both long-term and short-term factors.Show answer
Answer: Because the short-term Brexit issue was able to shift traditionally safe Labour seats partly because long-term partisan and class dealignment had already weakened voters' automatic loyalty to Labour in those seats.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a A Level Politics exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Using the 2019 general election, explain how a short-term factor influenced the result.
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'Short-term factors explain the outcome of the 2019 general election better than long-term factors do.' Analyse and evaluate this statement.
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